After a tremendous response from learners on Coursera, Berklee Online has created a Developing Your Musicianship specialization, and this course is the second course in the series. If you have a basic knowledge of music theory or if you have completed Developing Your Musicianship I, this course will continue to help you understand key musical concepts, enabling you to create and perform contemporary music. Taught by Berklee College of Music professor George W. Russell, Jr., the course includes four lessons that delve into the next level of harmony and ear training.
The course will introduce you to new key signatures, including minor tonalities, and how they are constructed. You will train your ear to hear minor intervals and 7th chords. You will learn how to build 7th chords, and how to build common chord progressions. You will also learn the major pentatonic scale and how to construct melodies using this scale.
The course culminates with an assignment that asks you to compose and perform an 8-measure composition using popular chord progressions and the Major pentatonic scale. Just like Developing Your Musicianship I, the course is designed to impart the joy of creating music and sharing it with others.

Welcome to Musicianship: Chord Charts, Diatonic Chords, and Minor Keys (also known as Developing Your Musicianship II)! Here we will cover all the details about the course and what you'll need to know to get the most out of your course experience.

Taught By

George W. Russell, Jr.

Professor

Transcript

[MUSIC] Well, welcome to Developing Your Musicianship 2. That tune was a tune called Teach Me Tonight, one of my favorite jazz standards. My name is George W Russell Jr. and I am going to be your guide to guide you through this course, your instructor, your teacher, your cheerleader. So, welcome again. Just a little bit about me, as I mentioned before, I'm the chair of the Harmony Department at the Berklee College of music. I'm also a professor of piano. I've been playing for many years and I love music. I love to play music, I love to write music, and I love to teach music. Another thing you should know about me is I'm a father of four and I'm married to the most amazing woman in the world. So that's me in a nutshell. Some of the topics that we will be covering in this class will be diatonic triads. We'll also define what diatonic is. Along with diatonic triads, will be diatonic 7th chords. We're going to be learning some popular progressions and you will be able to play right away because they're pretty simple. In addition to that, we're going to learn the major pentatonic scale. For those of you who took the MOOC one class, we did the minor pentatonic scale. This time we're going to learn the major pentatonic scale. All this is going to lead up to our final project, which will be an eight bar progression, or more if you choose to. And this progression is going to include some of the popular progressions that we talked about, along with you writing a melody that's based upon the major pentatonic scale. Now there will be homework for this class. So you should expect to spend at least 30 minute outside of this class each day doing this homework. One other very important thing to remember is that this class is mandatory fun. The rules are you must have fun.

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